Wednesday, 9 June 2010

Tory MP and environment campaigner Zac Goldsmith told the programme: "If you lump gardens and wasteland in the same category, developers will always go for gardens because it's easier and cheaper.

"We are not saying there shouldn't be development, there are other alternatives. There are a lot of empty homes.

"We want to protect gardens so that instead of being top of the list for developers, they are at the bottom."

No, the fact is that we have just about run out of wasteland. Labour (to their credit) did a lot to ease building on wasteland in their time in power and builders responded. As a result, we have a map like this: http://www.londonbrownfieldsites.org/Mapping/. No, don't look at the pinkish bits. It's the brown specs on that map which show derelict land/buildings. See them? Good luck with that. In London, there just isn't any. The builders have used it up.

No, there aren't lots of empty homes. In the South of England, less than 2.5% of homes are empty.The Empty Homes Agency estimate that if all Britain's empty houses were brought back into use, it would meet 2 years of the government's growth needs. In the South of England, less than 2.5% of homes are empty.

The problem is that there is little derelict land, the government have taken away local building targets and so there will not be much land made available.

We are going to enter into a housing crisis after 5 or 10 years because of these stupid, NIMBY policies